


Careless Talk

by fredbassett



Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:57:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christine Johnson has got control of the ARC and Connor was in the wrong place at the wrong time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Careless Talk

“Stop pacing around, mate,” Danny Quinn said, his voice surprisingly gentle.

Lester looked up from the laptop balanced on his knee and added his voice to Danny’s. “I’m doing what I can, Becker, but the bloody woman has crawled right up the minister’s arse. There’ll be some leverage somewhere we can use against her, though, I’m sure of it.”

If truth be told, Lester wasn’t actually sure of very much, and neither was Danny, but there was no point in making things any worse than they already were. Christine Johnson had staged a very clever coup, taking advantage of the fact that Danny, Becker and Abby had been out of the ARC on an anomaly call out on the day he’d been summoned to the Home Office. She’d walked in, flashed her authorisation from on high, and promptly dismissed Becker’s security team, replacing them with her own men. 

The only one of Lester’s team left in the ARC had been Connor, who’d stayed behind to work on a problem with the ADD. And as a result, he was still there. All Lester had been told was that Connor had been retained by Johnson to ‘help with matters of national security’. For ‘retained’ read ‘detained’. Lester had been told in no uncertain terms to stall well away from the ARC if he valued his career, which, frankly, at that particular moment, he didn’t. 

They were all holed in his London flat, and had been for the last 24 hours while he did his best to call in every favour he’d ever been owed in an attempt to find out how Johnson had managed to pull a stunt like this and what the hell he could do to get her put back in her box. Becker had spent most of that time pacing backwards and forwards like a black panther in a zoo. Abby had made endless cups of coffee and Danny had come up with increasingly bizarre schemes. It was probably a measure of Lester’s desperation that he was even starting to take some of them seriously.

Becker’s main source of agitation was the fact that Connor was in Johnson’s hands and was likely to remain so for the foreseeable future unless Lester could manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat. His head of security’s relationship with their resident genius had been the ARC’s worst kept secret, and although Becker had never been anything other than the consummate professional at work, it had been obvious that he’d fallen very hard for Connor, and he was clearly finding the uncertainty difficult to handle.

The short, sharp ringtone of a mobile phone cut across Abby’s offer of more coffee. Becker dragged his phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen. “It’s a text from Connor!” he said, sudden hope lightening his black mood.

Lester closed his eyes in relief. At least now they might have some idea what the hell was happening inside the ARC. 

A moment later, his hopes crumbled as he saw a look of horror settle on Becker’s handsome face. 

Danny was at his friend’s side in an instant. “Oh fuck,” he breathed, staring at the screen in Becker’s now-shaking hand. 

The phone was emitting a confused babble of sound: raucous laughter, followed by a grunt of pain and more laughter. Then a voice said clearly, “Don’t suppose your stuck up little prick of a boyfriend’ll be quite so high and mighty when he finds out about this, will he?” Even more laughter followed.

Lester stayed frozen in place, the laptop still on his knee. From Becker’s murderous expression, the sheer horror in Danny’s eyes and Abby’s ashen face, it didn’t take much of an imagination to work out what was being played out on the screen on Becker’s phone.

When the noise from the phone died away, Danny took it from Becker’s grasp and mutely handed it over to Lester. A video clip was attached to an email sent from Connor’s phone. Lester opened the attachment and stared at the screen.

The picture was shaky – hardly surprising as the person holding the phone had clearly been doing a lot of the laughing – and showed the inside of one of the ARC’s rest rooms. He recognised the off-white walls and the blue cover on the duvet on the narrow single bed. 

Not that much of the duvet was visible underneath the activity taking place on top of it. He watched in horror as a man wearing the desert fatigues of Johnson’s soldiers positioned himself between Connor’s bare legs and thrust himself inside the young man’s prone body with a muffled grunt. Then the chilling words he’d heard a moment ago were repeated.

The rape didn’t last long. The man thrust a few times, grunted, and then rolled off, grinning at the camera. The video ended, leaving Lester with the sickening feeling that the man doing the filming had been intending to take his own turn.

Before Lester had a chance to force any words past suddenly very dry lips, Becker’s phone bleeped again, signalling another incoming message. Dreading what he was about to see, Lester opened the message as Becker stood rooted to the spot.

The words _Believe me, I had nothing to do with this. We need to talk. Joe._ appeared on the screen.

Lester held the phone out to Becker. “Who’s Joe?”

“Joe Wilder,” Becker said, grabbing the phone from Lester’s hands and stabbing his finger viciously at the screen. “Johnson’s lackey.”

* * * * *

“I swear on my life, I had nothing to do with it, Becker,” Wilder said, without the slightest expectation of being believed. “Bates and Healy are fucking psychos and I’d bust them in a fucking heartbeat, but my hands are tied. I’m fucking certain that Johnson was behind this. She’s a vindictive bitch and the lad had put her back up by refusing to cooperate.”

Becker’s response was exactly what he’d expected to hear.

“That won’t get you anywhere,” Wilder said quickly. “My lot have got orders from Herself to shoot on sight if you or any of your lads come within a mile of this place. You’re going to have to trust me, Becker. I’ll do what I can to make sure he’s safe.”

“I’ll fucking kill them,” Becker told him in a voice of ice and steel. “And I’ll fucking kill you if any more harm comes to him, Joe. They’re under your fucking command. Control your fucking dogs.”

“Would it help if you spoke to him?” Wilder offered. “I promise you, Becker, I’m not the enemy. I’ll call you back. Stay where you are.”

* * * * *

“Do you believe him?” Lester asked.

Becker struggled against the urge to heave his guts up. “I don’t know. Wilder’s a hard bastard, but he’s always been straight.”

He felt the reassuring weight of Danny’s hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get him out of there, mate.”

Before Becker had a chance to reply, his phone started to ring. He snatched at the call like a drowning man grabbing a rope. “Conn?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Connor’s voice was quiet, but unmistakeably him. “I’m OK, Becks, really I am.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” Becker said softly. “Jesus, Conn… Just do whatever she wants, OK? And we’ll come for you, I promise you we will.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Connor said. “And it wasn’t Captain Wilder’s fault. He dragged them off me. Honestly, he did.”

“It’ll all be OK,” Becker said, not believing his own words, but needing to say them anyway. “It’ll be OK,” he repeated. “Trust me.”

“I do trust you,” Connor said softly.

Becker closed his eyes, wanting to say more, but the next voice he heard was Wilder’s. “Give me 24 hours. I’ll get something you can use against her, I’m sure of it. In the meantime see if Lester can do anything with that fucking video.”

* * * * *

Wilder ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. He’d taken the phone off Healy on the pretext of checking Connor’s messages and contacts to see if there was any leverage they could use against their recalcitrant guest. The pair of them had claimed as their defence, when challenged by him, that Christine Johnson had instructed them to soften up Connor ‘by any means’. They were both far too fucking cocky about their actions for it to be worth his while checking with Johnson. The woman was a stone-cold bitch and he could easily believe it of her. She hadn’t given two flying fucks for any of the losses Ross’s men had taken in their attempts to get the artefact she’d been so desperate to acquire, so a bit of extra curricular activity like rape was hardly going to be an issue.

And although he’d told Becker to see what use Lester could make of the footage his men had taken of their little ‘games’, as they’d put it, he didn’t have much hope of that succeeding. Johnson had been leading the minister by his dick for months now, and the weak-willed little scrote had basically given her everything she wanted. Including control of the Anomaly project and an open brief to get some ‘results’, although quite what was meant by that had never been made clear.

“I’ll send a medic to you,” Wilder said to Connor. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what they did, and I’ll find a way of making them regret it.”

Connor looked up at him, his eyes dark and unreadable. “I’m OK,” he said, repeating the lie he’d told his boyfriend.

Wilder didn’t call him on it. What Connor didn’t know was that Wilder had been in that position himself, many years ago at Sandhurst, when a drunken initiation ceremony had been taken too far. He’d never forgotten or forgiven, but he had got even, even though in one case it had taken 15 years. He simply nodded and said, “Like I told Becker, I’ll see what I can do.”

Connor brushed a trace of blood away from his bruised mouth and nodded. “Thanks… and thanks for letting me speak to Becker.”

Wilder sought out his team medic and gave the man orders to pump Connor full of industrial strength painkillers. If the kid was off his head, that would keep Johnson off his back for a bit longer and give him time to find something to use against her. He doubted that the rape by itself would be enough; too easy for her to claim the men had simply gone off the rails of their own accord. But sending it to Becker had been worth a try, even though it must have been like a knife in the guts for the poor sod.

* * * * *

Christine Johnson was in one of the science labs, staring at the artefact she’d gone to such lengths to obtain.

Wilder watched as she ran her fingers lightly along its length as though she could unlock its secrets by touch and force of will alone. She was more ruthless than anyone he’d ever had the misfortune to work with. She’d clawed her way up within the MoD leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, but somehow she’d always managed to come up smelling of roses.

Why she’d been so determined to get control of the anomaly project, Wilder didn’t know, but he suspected she’d been the sort of kid who’d always wanted someone else’s toys rather than her own.

“Have you found any clues to what that thing actually does, ma’am?” he asked.

She shook her head, her long, immaculately manicured fingers tightening possessively around the artefact, and Wilder had no difficulty at all imagining them wrapped around the minister’s cock. “That little shit Temple is still claiming he knows nothing. If he continues to refuse to play nicely we’ll have to see what we can do to loosen his tongue. Maybe another visit from Bates and Healy might make him see the error of his ways.”

Wilder studiously kept any expression off his face. “Is the minister prepared to authorise… unorthodox… methods, ma’am?”

“The minister will do exactly what I want him to do, Wilder. The man bears a close resemblance to one of those dinosaurs James Lester’s team have spent so long chasing around after. He’s got a brain the size of a pea located somewhere in his arse.” She smiled down at her fingers, still holding the strange, hexagonal tube. “He also has an extremely small dick and no idea at all what to do with it.”

“Ma’am?” Wilder injected a note of enquiry into the word.

Johnson sighed. “Don’t be naive, Wilder. You know how things are done in Whitehall. But when I unlock whatever secrets this little beauty is withholding, I won’t need to toady up to unspeakable little shits like the minister in future.” She fixed him with an unblinking stare that reminded him of a beautiful but deadly bird of prey. “Now get me some results, Wilder. I need to know what this thing does and how we can use it to our advantage.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Wilder turned on his heel and walked briskly away. He certainly had something he could use to advantage. Just not quite in the way Christine Johnson had envisaged.

* * * * *

Christine slammed her mobile phone down hard on the desk, anger boiling inside her, looking for an outlet. “The wretched little man isn’t taking my calls!”

Wilder stood at parade rest by the door, hands linked loosely behind his back. “Ma’am?”

She gestured angrily at the piece of paper on the desk. The piece of paper that had spewed out of the fax machine in James Lester’s office an hour ago, instructing her to hand back control of the anomaly project to him immediately. She’d assumed it was a hoax, with Lester having forged the minister’s signature or something, but a call from the Home Office checking that she’d received the communication had brought with it the unwelcome realisation that the fax was genuine.

She’d spent the last hour trying to get through to him, but without success. His secretary simply told her that he was unavailable and couldn’t be disturbed. His private line went unanswered, and calls to his mobile simply went straight to voicemail. The spineless little fucker had clearly gone to ground and was refusing to come out. And in the meantime she had James Lester at the main gate brandishing a piece of paper that returned full control of the anomaly project to him.

“Let the bastard in, Wilder,” she said, struggling against the urge to sweep everything off Lester’s desk and stamp on it.

“No need, Christine,” a smooth voice said from the doorway. “Your man at the gate decided to do the sensible thing. I think a phone call from the minister might have helped him make up his mind.”

Christine stood up so quickly that the chair fell over behind her with a crash. Lester just stood aide and gestured with one hand towards the door. 

“This isn’t the end, James,” she told him.

“Are you about to tell me that you’ll be back, Christine?” Lester said with an irritating smirk. “I think you’ll find that’s not a very original line.”

Without deigning to reply, Christine swept out of the door and down the ramp with Wilder at her heels. The eyes of Lester and his staff bored into her back as she stalked out through the atrium, her heels echoing loudly in the silence. Lester had provided no clues as to the minister’s sudden change of heart, and the little shit still wasn’t taking her calls. But if Lester thought it was game, set and match to him, he’d have another think coming.

* * * * *

Becker unlocked the door of the overnight room, an uncomfortable mixture of anger and concern warring for precedence in his guts.

Connor was sitting on one of the twin beds, his back against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chin. When he saw Becker, a wide smile replaced the haunted look on his face, but there was no mistaking the dark circles under his eyes or the bruised lip where the back of someone’s hand had driven it hard against his teeth.

Without speaking he crossed to the bed in three long strides, holding his hand down to Connor, not knowing whether the contact would be welcome on not. Becker’s fears on that score were soon dispelled when Connor took his hand and held it hard.

Becker sat down on the bed and gently pulled Connor into his arms. How long they stayed like that, Becker didn’t know. He was content just to hold onto his lover and stroke his fine, dark hair, combing it through his fingers the way he knew Connor liked. They ended up with Becker leaning back against the white-painted wall, Connor’s head pillowed in Becker’s lap.

“Have you seen a medic?” Becker asked quietly.

Connor nodded. “Captain Wilder got one to see me last night. They helped me get cleaned up and stuffed me up with a load of painkillers. What happened, Becks? How did Lester managed to swing this one?” 

“Joe Wilder sent him a tape of a few choice remarks from Johnson. The minister didn’t seem too bothered by her comparison of him to a brontosaurus, but he vehemently objected to the assertion that he has a small dick. Johnson really shot herself in the foot with that one.”

“Captain Wilder pulled them off me. He might work for Johnson – and I don’t suppose he’s got much say in that – but he’s a good man.”

“He was one of my instructors at Sandhurst,” Becker said, conscious of exactly how much he owed the man. Lester made sure the minister didn’t let on that he’d heard what she said. “Ostensibly, she’s being redeployed on another matter, although she doesn’t know it yet. Tomorrow, she’d going to get told her next job is checking security at GCHQ. I’m told that’s the defence equivalent of painting the Forth Bridge, so it should keep her out of our hair for a while.”

“What about Wilder?”

“She’s got no idea that he played any part in her downfall But Lester’s arranging for Joe to be transferred to the ARC on secondment for a while.” She brushed Connor’s unruly dark hair out of his eyes. “Would you like to go home, Conn? I think the ARC can manage without us.”

Connor smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Becks. I’m sure I’ll be all right.”

Becker wasn’t sure of anything at that point, apart from the knowledge that he would stand by Connor, no matter how bad things seemed, but he wasn’t going to allow any uncertainty to show in this face. He pressed a light kiss to Connor’s forehead.

“It’ll all be fine now. I promise.”

And no matter what happened, he’d do his best to make sure that promise was kept.


End file.
